This book describes the connections and relationships between Percy Bysshe Shelley and Mary Shelley, Thomas Paine, Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin. In their day they were all celebrated writers, but today it is Godwin who is probably the least known. He was the husband of Wollstonecraft and the father of Mary Shelley. Mary Shelley's novel "Frankenstein" is dedicated to Godwin.
Stimulated by new editions of Shelley's writings and the evidence of notebooks, the editors have assembled an outstanding group of international Shelley scholars to work through the implications of recent advances in scholarship. With particular attention to texts that have been neglected or underestimated, the contributors consider many important aspects of Shelley's prolific and remarkably diverse output, including the verse letter, plays, prose essays, satire, pamphlets, political verse, romance, prefaces, translations from the Greek, prose style, artistic representations, fragments and early writings. Revaluations of Shelley's youthful works, often criticized for their over-exuberance, pay dividends as they reveal Shelley's early maturation as a writer and also shed light on his later achievement. Taken as a whole, the collection makes evident that Shelley's reputation has been based largely on surprisingly imperfect and incomplete edited publications, driven by Victorian taste and culture. A writer very different from the one we thought we knew emerges from these essays, which are sure to inspire more reappraisals of Shelley's work.
This book, originally published in 1979, traces the growth of English radicalism from the time of Wilkes to the final suppression of the radical societies in 1799. The metropolitan radical movement is described in the context of the general democratic evolution of the West in the age of the American and French revolutions, by showing how its direction was influenced by events in France, Scotland and Ireland. The book emphasizes the importance of the great regional centres of provincial radicalism and of the evolution of a local, radical press. It also throws light on the impact of Painite radicalism, the origins of Anglo-french hostilities in 1793, the English treason trials of 1794, the protest movement of 1795 and the final phase of Anglo-Irish clandestine republicanism.
`Religion and politics are necessarily related', declared Ronald Reagan, while addressing an ecumenical prayer breakfast of 17,000 people in Dallas. But how are they connected? Many popular images of God - King, Lord, and Judge - are essentially political, while concepts of might, majesty, dominion, and power are used of both God and the state. This ambitious and original work explores the relations between these images and their political context through the analogy between divine and civil government, and considers what images of God may legitimately be employed by Christians in the twentieth century. David Nicholls suggests that religious conceptions have often affected political thinking - theological rhetoric, child of political experience, may also be mother of political change. Drawing upon politics, theology, history, sociology, anthropology, and literary criticism, this important new book will be essential reading for all concerned with the relation between Christianity and politics.
First published in 1998. This book is divided into two parts. The first part is concerned with expounding a broad framework and with illustrating it from a wide variety of historical examples. The second part narrows the focus to modern Britain, largely in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and has particular reference to the years covered by the world wars, 1914–1945. The aim of the second part is to exemplify the framework in detail within the specific context of British history. However, it would have been quite as feasible to select American history for this purpose.
